Personal Home or Vacation Condo
Buying and Selling your Home or Vacation Condo
Buying a house requires a lot of time and effort. We have found that following these 10 steps helps ensure the home buying process is manageable and allows you to make the best decisions.
Step 1: How Much House Can You Afford?
Most mortgage lenders commonly suggest that people look for homes that cost no more than three to five times their annual household income if the home buyers plan to make a 20% down payment and end up with a small debt to equity ratio at closing.
We recommend you use an online calculator to determine how much house you can afford.
Step 2: Begin Your Home Research Second
As soon as you can, start searching commercial real estate Web sites, newspapers, and magazines that have real estate listings. Keep an electronic notebook (Microsoft Excel) of particular homes you are interested in and monitor to determine how long they are on the market. Be sure to keep track of any changes in asking the seller’s prices. Properties showing a history of regular price adjustments in a downward trend can be signs that the market is in turmoil. This also provides you a sense of the housing trends for the areas in which you are looking.
The second thing is to begin looking for the banks and financial institutions that extend the best mortgage offers, given the interest rate, terms, and process.
Step 3: Get Prequalified with a bank for Your Mortgage
You must know how much you can spend before heading to the bank. Next, go to the bank you chose in Step 2 and ask to get prequalified for a mortgage. You will find that you will need to provide financial information about you and any partner or spouse (you may have) to your mortgage banker. They will ask about your income and the amount of savings and investments you have. Your lender will then review this information and tell you how much the bank can lend to you for your house. This will help to determine the price range for the homes you will consider.
Most times, these days, a realtor will ask if you are preapproved for a mortgage, which involves providing financial documents (W-2 statements, paycheck stubs, bank account statements, etc.) so the lender can verify your financial status and credit rating.
Step 4: Meet with your Envest Realty Real Estate Agent
At this stage, our agent will partner with you to help you through the process of buying or selling a home. Our real estate agents will provide you with helpful information on homes and neighborhoods in the area you are looking in. Many times, this information is on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is only available to licensed realtors. Our agents’ knowledge of the home buying process, negotiating prices, and familiarity with the area you want to live is beneficial. And it doesn’t cost you anything to use our agent if you’re buying a house. Our agents are compensated from the commission paid by the seller of the property.
Step 5: Find for Your Home and Make an Offer
Your Envest Real Estate Agent will begin to schedule tours of homes that match your price range. Always be sure to take notes on all the homes you tour. Hopefully, you will see a lot of houses before you decide. It is challenging to remember everything about all of them. Also, don’t forget to take pictures or a video of the ones you like as you go along. Make sure to check out the little details of each house. It’s also essential to evaluate the neighborhood. Take as much time as you need to find the right home.
Once you and your Envest Realty agent begin to discuss the first offer, remember, your agent will help negotiate the best deal by delivering an offer to the seller based on the value of comparable homes in the same neighborhood. Once the seller has agreed on a price, the house will go into escrow. It is during this period that all remaining steps in the home buying process are completed.
Step 6: Have the Home Inspected
Most purchases are made with offers that are contingent on a home inspection of the property to check for signs of structural damage or things that may need fixing. Your Envest Realty agent will help you arrange to have this inspection conducted within a few days of the seller accepting your offer. This contingency protects you by giving you a chance to renegotiate your offer or withdraw it without penalty if the inspection reveals significant material damage. You can then decide if you want to ask the seller to fix anything on the property before closing the sale. Before the sale closes, you will have a walk-through of the house, which gives you the chance to confirm that any agreed-upon repairs are completed.
Step 7: Work with your Mortgage Banker to Choose Your Loan
Lenders have a wide range of loan programs. Depending on your mortgage priorities, whether keeping your monthly payments as low as possible or ensuring that your monthly payments never increase or picking the type of loan because you think you will be moving again in just a few years, mortgage bankers are prepared to show you a variety of loan types that will meet your short- or long-term goals.
Step 8: Bank Requests and Orders a Home Appraisal
The bank will arrange for an appraiser to provide an independent estimate of the value of the house you are buying. The appraiser is a member of a third-party company and is not directly associated with the lender. The appraisal will let all the parties involved know that you are paying a fair price for the home.
Step 9: Completing the Home Purchases Paperwork
The title company generally handles all of the paperwork and legal actions required for buying a house. Usually, the buyer or lender arranges for a title company to handle all of the paperwork and make sure that the person or company you are buying the house from is the rightful owner of the house.
Step 10: Close the Sale
At closing, you will sign all of the paperwork required to complete the purchase at the office of the title company, including your loan documents. It typically takes a few days for your loan to be funded after the paperwork is returned to the lender. Once the check is delivered to the seller by the title company, you are ready to move into your new home!
